


Requirement

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-13
Updated: 2009-01-13
Packaged: 2019-01-23 13:50:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12508852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: [Fic Exchange '08] It seems ridiculous to believe that I ever made an adventure into the Room of Requirement, that I was ever jealous of Hermione Granger, and that I ever got my heart broken by Ron Weasley.





	Requirement

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

Merry Christmas, Felicitas (feli)!

.

_Blank_.

The wall was entirely blank. The trolls twisted and twirled and pirouetted in their sad attempts at ballet and still, the wall remained blank.

_\- blank like my mind, like my face, like his eyes when they pass over me now as though I don't matter, as though nothing we had done together ever mattered -_

I tried again. I walked back and forth and back and forth, hoping all the while that Parvati was off with that Ravenclaw boy again and hoping all the while that no one would find me and hoping all the while that maybe he would come here looking for me and hoping all the while that he would not.

\- _not that he had ever looked for me before, because it was never really me, never me at all; only ever her and him and his sister and his mother and his brothers and never, never really me -_

I was perfectly alone in the corridor and now Barnabas the Barmy was pretending to stretch while staring at me. Maybe there was a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth, a barely suppressed laugh behind the hand of that troll; maybe all of them were making fun of my embarrassing failure and how I couldn't concentrate hard enough on what I needed.

_\- needed to take him away from the other Gryffindors, away from the common room, the library, the places he usually took me because there he couldn't escape her and he couldn't stop thinking about her and I didn't want him thinking about her anymore, only me -_

My eyes were stinging. Maybe I didn't care about him at first, but he had cared about me; that had been enough to make me need him in a way I had never needed anyone else. And this, this was what had come of it: runny mascara and a rapidly deteriorating social life, not to mention my inability to let go.

_\- go with me, I had said, and he had listened (if only because she was off with his best friend again) and I had brought him to where nobody was watching us, to where we didn't have to glue ourselves together, to where it was just our voices and our hands intertwining together and for once, it was enough -_

The wall shifted; the door was familiar and devastating to me at the same time but I needed this moment, this closure, more than I needed to go back to my dormitory and curl up in my bed and so I stepped forward. I wasn't sure what I expected: a set-up identical to the one he had conjured that one night, every note we had ever exchanged stuck to the wall, an exact replica of his room at the Burrow. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.

\- _saw that he had changed, saw that inside that magical room he had shifted into someone I had never known, and maybe it was because he knew those moments would later be important to me, but he told me about his childhood and his family and his life and I'd never felt closer to anyone -_

The room was dark, and for a split second I honestly believed that everything was going to be identical to that night and I could relive it. Then I realized there were no fluffy couches sprawled sporadically across the room; there were no shadows of furniture at all. The room was entirely empty. I thought that maybe it hadn't worked, that maybe my need wasn't strong enough, that maybe this was what my mind had wanted. Then the voices from that night started playing in my head – like one of those Muggle things with the moving pictures, except so much more real.

_\- real like what we had in that room, a real relationship and not the fake one we had conjured for everyone to gawk at, but something that existed and could last if only we had had more time, if only she hadn't messed things up for us, if only he hadn't been in the relationship in order to be with her, if only he hadn't been using me, if only I hadn't accepted being used –_

I wanted to scream at the room, to tell it to work like normal, but the tears cascading down my face strangled my voice; the only thing I heard was that night, echoing in my ears, in my head, in my entire body. Those fantasies, memories, ghosts silently burst on the walls and now I realized that he had never been talking to me at all, that it had always been her he was imagining in my place. Everything we had shared had been for her, always for her, and my little fishbowl, my snowglobe, my oh-Merlin-I-live-in-a-glass-bubble ideas had been cracked and I played with their shards for a while. It stung.

_\- stung because he had never thought we could have something more, had never thought that I was anything better than her no matter what I did or said, or how hard I tried to act like her, because I wasn't her and I never could be and so he didn't, couldn't, wouldn't really want me ever -_

I ran out of the room, not caring that Filch might see me, not caring that my make-up might be running, not caring that I probably looked like a lunatic with my hands clasped crazily against my ears to stop those damn voices.

\- _voices that showed me the truth in his words and my own, voices that brought me out of my delusion that he had ever felt anything even close to what I wanted him to feel, voices that made me realize that my imagination had carried me off into an ocean of cold disappointment again -_

I never found out for sure if I had actually heard them playing in the room, or if it was a figment of my imagination. Now, those memories seem just beyond my fingertips, and when I do reach out and grab them, they are fuzzy. It seems ridiculous to believe that I ever made an adventure into the Room of Requirement, that I was ever jealous of Hermione Granger, and that I ever got my heart broken by Ron Weasley.


End file.
